While Call of Duty Warzone and Mobile are continuing to perform great in 2021, there is one entry in the popular franchise that has definitely seen better days. As you may have already guessed based on the title, we are of course referring to Call of Duty Online. If that name doesn’t ring a bell that’s because the game was never available in the west. COD Online was developed exclusively for the Chinese market and did pretty well for a time. But now Tencent is reportedly preparing to pull the plug on it very soon.
Call of Duty Online was launched back in 2015 as a free-to-play game for PC. Prior to the release of Warzone and Mobile, COD Online was the only F2P entry in the franchise and was meant to introduce Chinese players to the FPS series. By all accounts, the game managed to fulfill its purpose but the recent decline in interest (and revenue) was a clear sign that Call of Duty Online was reaching the end of its lifecycle. As such, Tencent announced a couple of days ago that the game will be shutting down permanently in late August.
The main reason for the decline of COD Online seems to be the rising popularity of Call of Duty Mobile, which made its way to China in late 2020. In other words, the franchise is by no means leaving the country as Tencent is now encouraging COD Online players to make the switch over to the mobile version. Publisher Activision is apparently even giving out various rewards to players who are migrating from Online to Mobile.
The mobile gaming market has been getting massive these past few years in China but a lot of players will no doubt miss playing Call of Duty on PC come late August. As a result, we’re likely to see a huge influx of Chinese players coming to Warzone in the near future. The Battle Royale game is officially not supported in China just yet, so they only way to play it from there is by joining NA or EU servers. It remains to be seen how this will affect the Warzone scene in the west.
